Most online advertising, typically through the Internet, is accomplished via the use of an ad-server technology where a placeholder tag is used on the online publishers webpage and a request is made to the ad-server, which may be located anywhere in the internet, to fill in the space. A number of companies have been created to fill the need to serve and manage these advertisements for these online content publishers. These ad-servers and ad-management companies have been some of the fastest growing companies in the Internet marketplace.
There is a serious problem with online advertising which uses a banner ad. As the user's desktop becomes more complex and cluttered, the effectiveness of banner advertising diminishes. Advertisers and advertising agencies are seeking more effective channels on the Internet to get their message to the consumer. As a result, interstitial advertising has become and will likely continue to be an increasingly important factor in online advertising. Interstitials are those ads that break the proscenium of the web browser by either opening up a new window, or specific application, in order to draw the attention to the user. This occurs often at the annoyance of the user since it clutters the workplace even further. These methods have proven successful though as click through rates have increased dramatically, especially for media rich ads that clearly require the attention of the user. A problem with media-rich ads is that they are not tightly bound to the content that the publisher is providing. Further these ads typically require substantial buffering before they can be played by the consumer. This buffering causes delays in the presentation of the ad, and except for those users with very fast internet connections there is an unsatisfactory experience.
It is important to note that streaming media publishers now have few or no audio ads in play on their sites. The reason for this resides in a number of technology problems that exist in the delivery of streaming audio advertising. Most notably that streaming audio, unlike its webpage cousin, cannot tolerate the delays and buffering that a traditional ad-server technology uses. Thus, there exists a need for a process to provide content, such as advertising, efficiently and effectively in conjunction with a media stream.